I
had the privilege of having Zohra Sehgal and her Pakistani sister Uzra
Butt over for dinner. Zohra is two years older than me; Uzra two years
my junior. Both sisters are fitter than I am both in mind and body.
Zohra (92) has a phenomenal memory. She can recite reams of Urdu
poetry by the hour without looking at a scrap of paper: I learnt Uzra
(88) does much the same in Lahore. The two sisters conceived,
concocted and enacted a dialogue between them Ek Tthee Nani (once
there was a maternal grandmother) which draws packed houses in India
and Pakistan. What is the secret of their physical and mental fitness?
From Zohra I gathered she eats very little and lives largely on soups
and broths.

Sisterly
act: Uzra Butt and Zohra Sehgal in Ek Tthee Nani

A still from Kaya Taran:
Too sophisticated to be a hit

She spends an hour
every morning on the roof strolling about and refreshing her memory of
Urdu poetry. She has cut down her social life to the minimum and
refuses to give interviews either on the phone or in person unless it
is paid for. I chided her when she came to wish me on my 90th
birthday. I said, "Zohra, I hear you charge a fee for talking to
anyone. Is that true? "She beamed a smile and put out an open
palm of her hand "Haan — yes, lao fees do, pay me
at once."

From Uzra I picked up
another clue to longevity. The sisters had been with Prithvi Theatres
and then with Uday Shanker’s dance troupe doing Bharatanatyam. I
asked Uzra whether she was still dancing. "There are not many
takers for Bharatanatyam in Pakistan. But this time in India I have
been learning Odissi — it is less mechanical and more sensuous. I
find it more fulfilling." I was amazed: to learn a new form of
dancing at the age of 88 is truly defying the passage of years. Moral:
If you want to prolong your life, look forward to doing something in
the tomorrows to come.

Two
nightmares

Two happenings no
Indian would like to recur were the one following the assassination of
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and the other following the attack on the
Sabarmati Express at Godhra railway station. In both cases, for crimes
committed by a handful of criminals the entire communities they
belonged to were punished in the most diabolical ways. What made these
pogroms sinister was that the administration took no steps to prevent
them and was even suspect for having connived at them.

If the first had been
put down with an iron hand, the second might not have occurred. Since
those responsible for the first remain unpunished, those guilty of the
second may also go scot-free as well. Both were reminiscent of Nadir
Shah’s order for a general massacre of the city’s population to
teach it a lesson for the murders of a few of his soldiers. The main
differences were that while Nadir Shah was a foreign marauder, our two
pogroms were carried out by our own countrymen. Nadir’s general
massacre took place in the 18th century; ours two took place in the
20th and 21st centuries in independent India.

I never wanted to
relive October 31, and November 1, 1984. I had to when I sat through
Sashi Kumar’s Kaya Taran meaning chrysalis or pupa of a moth
or a butterfly. It is based on a short story in Malayalam by N.S.
Madhavan entitled when big trees fall — words borrowed from
Rajiv Gandhi’s explanation of the wide spread anti-Sikh violence of
November, 1984. His story is based on a true incident in Meerut when a
Sikh woman and her seven-year old son, running to escape a gang of
murderers, were rescued and given shelter by nuns of a Convent. Sashi
Kumar expanded his theme and linked the killings of Sikhs in northern
India with the killings of Muslims in 2002 in Narendra Modi’s
Gujarat.

Among the stars are
Seema Biswas who acted Phoolan Devi in Bandit Queen and
cricketer Bishen Bedi’s son, Angad. It is a highly emotional film
with the moral "Never allow such things to happen again in our
country." Though the dialogue is in Hindi, it is far too
sophisticated to make a box office hit; no songs, no dances but a
tear-jerker.

Bedtime
story

Santa always
pronounced J for Y or U. Dialect-wise he substituted B for V. He would
utter, "I am still Jung man of 70. I served in Junion Bank of
India for 40 years. One day he invited Banta, "You are most
heartily invited on our Bedding Anniversary." All the
visualisation of Banta ended in smoke when he reached his home.